The Njinteh Market in Bafut, Mezam Division, came alive again on the 22 of August 2025 as over 250 community members, led by women of the Community Women Peacebuilder’s Network (COWOPNET), turned out for a massive cleanup exercise. Armed with hoes, spades, cutlasses, wheelbarrows and gloves, they cleared thick weeds, removed piles of waste, and reopened paths in a square that had long been abandoned.
The activity, spearheaded by COWOPNET which is a platform created by the Centre for Advocacy in Gender Equality and Action for Development (CAGEAD) was the first major community action at the market in years. Tools and sanitation gear were provided to sustain the effort, ensuring that Njinteh Market can be used again as a safe space for trade and community life.
According to CAGEAD’s Executive Director, Andiensa Clotilda Waah, the action represents something bigger than sanitation.
“This is peacebuilding in action. Through COWOPNET and the peace clubs we have established in Bafut, people are localising UNSCR 1325. Women are not only at the centre of survival, but at the centre of rebuilding. Njinteh Market is now a safe space for reconciliation, bonding and renewing trust.” she told Hilltopvoices
For decades, Njinteh Market was the nerve centre of Bafut. Every week, farmers arrived with baskets of yams, beans, maize and vegetables. Buyam-sellam buyers crowded the alleys, negotiating fiercely before transporting food into Bamenda, where the city’s families depended on Bafut’s fertile soils. Market days were not only about trade but about connection as neighbours caught up on news, friendships deepened, and community disputes were often resolved over shared meals and laughter.
When the armed conflict broke out in the North West and South West Regions more than eight years ago, all that changed. Violence and insecurity forced women away from Njinteh. Bush swallowed the stalls, rubbish piled up, and the chatter that once defined the square fell silent.
The absence of a market struck livelihoods. It broke the rhythms of community life, cutting off a space where tolerance, dialogue and social bonding naturally flourished. Women, who form the backbone of local trade, were especially hit. Reduced to selling by the roadside, they worked in unsafe conditions, exposed to accidents and harassment, their economic power and dignity eroded.
Njinteh became not only a physical ruin but a reminder of loss of food security, of shared spaces, and of peace itself.
The recent cleanup was an act of defiance against that loss.
Among those working was a grandmother Mama Manka'a Josephine, her back slightly curved with age but her hands still steady on the hoe. Beside her, a young woman in rain boots pushed a wheelbarrow heavy with waste. Their labour looked different, but their purpose was the same.
“I remember when this market was our place of joy,” the grandmother said, resting briefly to catch her breath.
“We brought food here, and by evening nothing was left unsold. We laughed here, quarrelled here, and reconciled here. When the fighting came, it all died. Today, I feel we are bringing it back.” (transcribed from pidgin English)
The young woman, her face damp with sweat but glowing with resolve, added: “For us, this is about the future. It is not only a place to sell food, but a place where we can meet without fear, where we can feel like one people again.”
Together, their words capture the intergenerational meaning of Njinteh’s revival which brings to life memory meeting vision and past suffering transforming into renewed hope.
The symbolism of women leading the cleanup is not lost on observers. Across conflict zones globally, women often bear the brunt of war losing livelihoods, taking on additional family burdens, and facing heightened risks of violence. Yet they also emerge as key drivers of peace, using grassroots networks to hold communities together when official systems collapse.
COWOPNET, initiated by CAGEAD, embodies this reality. It builds on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, which calls for women’s participation in all aspects of peacebuilding. For Andiensa Clotilda Waah, the cleanup is the practical face of that resolution in Bafut.
“UNSCR 1325 is about local women coming together, leading change and showing that peace starts with small but powerful acts. It is not some distant international idea” she said
COWOPNET has established peace clubs across Bafut and other divisions of the North West Region of Cameroon, offering women, mdn and youth platforms to share concerns, resolve disputes peacefully, and design local initiatives. The cleanup of Njinteh Market is one visible result of these clubs which is a reminder that peace is built not only at negotiation tables but also in everyday spaces where people live, trade and interact.
Partial view of the donated items
The cleanup campaign was equipped with wheelbarrows, hoes, spades, gloves, cutlasses and rain boots which are tools provided through the project to ensure continuity. Participants committed to maintaining the space as a shared responsibility, restoring not only the physical market but the culture of ownership and collective care that binds communities.
COWOPNET’s efforts have also drawn support from coalition partners, including the Association de Lutte contre les Violences faites aux Femmes (ALVF). Their backing highlights the importance of alliances in sustaining grassroots peacebuilding.
“Communities like Bafut need solidarity and consistent support so that their initiatives can grow and thrive. They don't only need sympathy." Andiensa Clotilda Waah emphasised.
On the surface, Njinteh Market’s revival may appear as a simple sanitation exercise. In truth, it is deeply symbolic. Markets are not only economic spaces. They are social theatres, where strangers become friends through repeated trade, where tolerance is practised in small exchanges, where disputes are resolved through dialogue rather than division.
Before the conflict, Njinteh provided precisely that as a natural arena for cooperation and coexistence. Its collapse mirrored the fragmentation of the community. Its renewal now signals a slow stitching back of social fabric.
As one participant observed during the cleanup: “When we meet here again, selling side by side, it will be harder to see each other as enemies. The market will remind us that we need one another.”
Bafut remains deeply affected by conflict, and Njinteh Market will not heal all wounds overnight. Yet the symbolism of hundreds of people coming together from the young and old, women and men to reclaim a space long abandoned sends a powerful message.
The grandmother’s memory of past market days and the young woman’s vision for the future capture the essence of this moment as a community that refuses to be defined only by its suffering.
Njinteh is breathing again, not just with the promise of trade but with the possibility of peace.
By Bakah Derick for Hilltopvoices Newsroom
Email: hilltopvoicesnewspaper@gmail.com
Tel: 6 94 71 85 77
